From Sacramento and Your Neighborhood

Greetings Neighbors! 

Welcome to Pride Month in San Francisco !  This marks the 36th year that cities across the nation have celebrated Pride as a way to highlight our beautiful diversity and support civil liberties for all.  Pride is also when we appreciate the hard work of pioneering advocates who came before us and who struggled for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community’s right to be treated with dignity and respect— a struggle that continues to this day. 

We trace the origins of Pride to the last weekend of June in 1969.  The Civil Rights movement had been in full swing for at least a decade.  The “Second Wave” of the Women’s Movement was taking root.  Protests against the Vietnam War were growing.  Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated a year prior.  Within this social and political context, another movement was about to emerge. 

June 27, 1969 was a seemingly quiet day in New York City ’s Greenwich Village , but it turned out to be a loud night of protests and would become the clarion call for a new generation.  It was on this night that the police, along with the Beverage Control Board, raided a popular gay bar, the Stonewall Inn.  The police claimed they were there to enforce liquor laws.  The problem was that these laws were being selectively used against establishments catering to LGBT individuals. 

At the time, police raids on gay bars were common practice.  In fact, most patrons did not protest because they were afraid of being publicly exposed as gay or lesbian.  This fear only gave police greater power to physically abuse, arrest, and scare people into submission without resistance.  To compound the situation, the target of those attacks would oftentimes be listed in the newspaper the next day as part of a societal campaign to intimidate, threaten, and shame these individuals.

However, minorities can take tyranny and oppression for only so long before they finally say “enough is enough!”  For queer folks in New York , that moment came on this June night in 1969, when the patrons of The Stonewall Inn fought back.  The resulting three nights of rioting gave birth to a social change movement in which thousands “came out of the closet” and proudly proclaimed their identity.  The next year, 5,000 LGBT individuals marched in New York City to commemorate the first year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. 

Each year in June, hundreds of cities, large and small, hold a festival and parade to honor that rebellion, and celebrate the newfound pride in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community.  San Francisco is home to one of the largest Pride festivals in the world, with a month-long series of events and programs throughout June, culminating in the annual parade down Market Street .  To find out more about this year’s Pride events, contact San Francisco Pride at (415) 864-FREE (3733) or via the web at http://www.sfpride.org.

To learn more about the history of this ongoing movement, you can also visit the GLBT Historical Society at 657 Mission Street #300 where they have exhibits, galleries, archival materials, and on-going programs that provide a wealth of knowledge about the LGBT experience.  You can find them on the web at http://www.glbthistory.org or call (415) 777-5455.

The struggle for LGBT inclusion continues today in the California Legislature, where I am proud to be a co-author for the Bias Free Curriculum Act of 2006, Senate Bill 1437, which would require that the historical contributions of LGBT Americans be reflected in the textbooks used in California ’s public schools.   This would give students a broader, more inclusive picture of our society, and has statistically been shown to reduce harassment and increase positive attitudes and fairness in schools.

I encourage you to learn more about the contributions of our LGBT citizens and its rich and vibrant history.  If you would like more information about this issue, or would be interested in joining me in my contingent during this year’s Pride Parade on June 25th, please contact my office in San Francisco at (415) 557-3013, via the web at http://www.assembly.ca.gov/Leno, or email me directly at Assemblymember.Leno@asm.ca.gov.